Polls are closed now in Indiana. Too close to call. But it's 59-41 in her favor with 5% reporting, but they seem to be indicating that the black districts report late.

I have a theory that might help her: doesn't it seem like the uncommitted superdelegates must largely be Clinton supporters? If you were an Obama supporter and a superdelegate, wouldn't you declare your support by now? It seems like the main reason not to declare your support would be if you're personally for her and waiting to see if it could be politically possible to support her.

i think you're right about those clinton superdelegates. i heard some pundit say just that the other day...but his take on it was, she hasn't "closed the deal" (kinda tired of that line) i.e. if they really are for her, something is causing them to hold out, and that must be bad.

Tony: If they're for her but holding back, it seems pretty obvious why they're holding back. If she can win under some measure of the popular vote, that could be enough for the ones who really want to go for her. I don't think it says anything negative about her that they're holding back at a point when it could end up that she lost the vote by all counts.

Up to 12% reporting now and it's 58-42. Still significantly larger than Pennsylvania ended up being. Fox News says they'll call it within the hour, which I interpret as meaning they'll call it for her. Seems like she won Indiana.

George, when you're as beautiful as Isabella Rossellini, you can get away with being a little loony tunes - or even a lot loony tunes. (Although bad timing meant that, IMO, she is only the second most beautiful person to appear on Letterman last week: Tina Fey was on, too.)

The fight will be over as to whether or not Michigan/Florida will eventually get their votes counted. This is where she will focus her intensity on. Deal or no deal, if Obama seriously thinks that Clinton will somehow take the high road on this, then he is dumber than he looks and is just another can in his naivete` pantry. There will not be a revote to legitimize these two states because the campaign dynamics are completely different at this stage. Not to mention that Howard Dean doesn't have the money to pay for a revote and will ask the respective states to pony up the cash and they will just tell him no. Howard Dean as the party chairman is finished after this, I think because his initial revocation of Michigan/Florida primaries will come back to bite him in the ass.

Furthermore, if Democrats were smart, which generally they aren't, they would ditch the superdelegate process and do it like Republicans do it. All the superdelegates have done is muddy the waters and game the system. CAC makes a good point about the uncommitted superdelegates and I agree with him in the fact that they are for Hillary, they are waiting for the convention to commit and Dean will ask all the delegates to get this done in one pass not 5, 6, or 7.

It seems like the main reason not to declare your support would be if you're personally for her and waiting to see if it could be politically possible to support her.

Doubt it. Nice wishful thinking though, Chris...you're cute!

Perhaps the Superdelegates are just waiting to actually reflect the "will of the people" and they're waiting to see the final tally on June 3rd.

If anything, Superdelegates have been running away, even former supporters and cabinet members, from the Clintons in droves. No one really likes her. They might fear (irrationally) the power of the Clinton name (Vince Foster! j/k), yes, but actually like Hillary...no way Jose.

MadisonMan, why is it that when Obama supporters threaten to stay home if their preferred candidate doesn't get the nomination, they are taken at their word and assumed to be serious about staying home, whereas when Clinton supporters say they won't vote for Obama in the fall, there's a presumption that they will fall in line in due course? Why is it any more or less fair to assume that, when Clinton gets the nomination, those youths and blacks who make up Obama's core constituency may make noise about staying home, but they're just "say[ing] that now. They have to go through the 5 stages of mourning before they can bring themselves around to voting for someone who's not the Beloved" Vozhd?

Why would a superdelegate declare now? Maybe it will get him on the White House Christmas card list but not much more. If he waits until the convention and one or the other candidates needs 10 or fewer votes , this former low level party operative can parlay his vote into a cushy White House job somewhere.

Why won't they call Indiana? All the networks keep talking about calling it. Okay, now they're going to explain why they're not calling on CNN...

"Because we're conservative by nature. We believe in counting the votes."

Seems like they're waiting for the two districts that are closest to Chicago, where they have no votes at all in yet. And as he talks about it, her lead in Indiana shrinks to 10 points, while Obama's lead in NC stays at 30 points.

Paul: Most people are too PC to say anything negative about those demographics. Still, he obviously wouldn't have won the black vote 9-to-1 if he weren't himself black, and that margin is what has consistently put him ahead in this race. He wouldn't be (potentially) the nominee without it. Doesn't the math, then, suggest that Geraldine Ferraro was right? I know that's not what people want to say, since you risk being accused of racism by saying it, but it seems pretty apparent.

I actually had an Obama campaigner come to my door yesterday. She was very nice and rather old and befuddled and I didn't have the heart to tell her that at every other door she knocked on, she'd get the same answer she got at my door. A mile from post...? We're all military non-residents not registered to vote in NC. Sorry.

SimonGood question. I think her supporters that say they won't vote for him are dead serious about not voting for him though; contrary to the spin. Exit polls from OH, PA, and now IN are pretty ugly if you're an Obama follower.

I am a black person (albeit a conservative) and will address the point of paul at 7:14.

When the campaign started, Hillary had her fair share of black support. The reason it moved away from her is because of her methods against Obama. Had she taken a different tact, she would have more support.

I would also make the argument that for as long as blacks could vote, blacks have voted for white presidents and helped put whites in office. We obviously have no trouble showing up for whites.

But then again, I think people forget too, that many blacks now have grandparents who couldn't even stay at the same hotels or take any career or marry any individual or live wherever they pleased and the concept of actually having a black president is like "wow."

It's kind of like when Croatians in the former Yugoslavia get their jollies when they actually get a country of their own.

So along comes Obama, similar in views to Hillary, more likeable, and satisfactory to a large number of whites. You cannot discount the desire by blacks to see a black person in office, most things being equal.

It's been a long time, given how long the country has been existence, the dirth of decent candidates, and how limited opportunity was as little as 50 year ago.

(And of course, in cases like Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court, we see that blacks don't automatically support the black candidate for a position).

In a world where NYC has St. Patrick's Day, celebrating all things Irish, and Columbus Day, where the Italians show up, and where I can turn on PBS and see chef Lydia bounce back and forth between Italy and the US with fondness, blacks often have nothing culturally to show. We have no homeland, no parades, and yet some of us have been here quite a while.

So yes if you have the same basic policy as the black candidate, but then proceed to dump on the black candidate and use race to siphon off votes, then yes you will lose lots of blacks.

Every time you hear the charge that Obama can't win white votes, despite shrinking the margins in Pennsylvania, or winning in white majority states, that is Senator Clinton making an argument not on issues, but racial appeals.

The only disgrace here, is that blacks don't have a habit of voting for both parties like other ethnic groups. Blacks should always diversify their vote across party and across race, but I certainly have an inkling of why they would pick Obama over Hillary.

And as long as the race continues to be about race, it does not bode well for the candidate who could be what he wants to be but claims to be from a race which comprises less than 13 percent of the population.

Harold Ford Jr is talking about the possibility that Obama should pick Clinton as the VP, even if it ends up being a clear, uncontested victory for the nomination, as a way of uniting the party. I'm still holding out hope that for that ticket, even though many people don't think it's a good idea.

"Fox News to make Indiana projection soon." I hope so. Her lead there is down to 6 points, while his lead in NC is at 26 points with 21% reporting. I fear this may be over, even if it goes on.

It seems like the main reason not to declare your support would be if you're personally for her and waiting to see if it could be politically possible to support her.

That's what I've been thinking for a while now, yeah. There's another, more cynical, explanation, though -- the superdelegates are waiting to see what kind of offers they get from Obama (government posts, pet projects, etc) before they pledge their support for him.

After all, Obama can't win without them, so it is in their interests to hold out for the best offer.

It seems like the main reason not to declare your support would be if you're personally for her and waiting to see if it could be politically possible to support her.

An alternative explanation would be that they want to support Obama, but see Hillary as a vindictive lady, and want to make sure that the stake is driven through her heart before they do something that could put them on the wrong side of the next president.

Harold Ford Jr is talking about the possibility that Obama should pick Clinton as the VP

I don't see that happening, but I bet Ford would make a good VP pick for Hillary. His extended family is awesomely crooked, but Jr himself seems like a decent sort -- and he's got enough connections to the black political establishment that they'd have a chance of keeping black voters on board for the election.

Lest I be misunderstood, I thought the BHO's early candidacy did precisely what he should do. Appeal to all voters regardless of their race. There is no question that he is bi-racial, and no more black than white.

Hillary's tactics forced him to pick one, and he should have stayed aracial. He tried to do that in the Philadelphia speech, but he couldn't hold that attitude.

He has the nomination sewed up, but he has alienated many of his white male would be admirers.

There were many out there, but they have abandoned him, probably irretrievably.

Good lord. What if 91% of white people voted for a white candidate? Why am I shocked that so few people are horrified by this?

I think the reason people aren't horrified is that they expect it to happen. What's amusing to me, though, is how we've heard so much about Hillary benefiting from white racism, and she's only getting like 60% of the white vote. Obama's getting 90% of the black vote and the only mention we hear of black racism is in relation to his spiritual adviser.

Hillary's tactics forced him to pick one, and he should have stayed aracial. He tried to do that in the Philadelphia speech, but he couldn't hold that attitude.

I'd say the Philadelphia speech is where he explicitly rejected that view, by making the controversy over his pastor a racial issue and making race the central point of his speech. He could have made it a speech about, say, patriotism and and coming together as Americans, and rejected Wright's separatist/supremacist schtick. That would have let him stay a race-neutral candidate. Instead he focused on the race-specific aspects of the controversy and offered excuses for his mentor's racism. That was a serious strategic error on his part.

Why am I shocked that so few people are horrified by this? Clearly these people are voting for this guy because he's black

Paul. I'm not shocked. The entire process has been breaking down into racial lines for some time now. This is what the super delegates are afraid of and what they have no hope of stopping. The blacks are by and large voting exclusivity on racial lines. You are right to be horrified.

My completely politically incorrect prediction is that if Obama is the candidate you will be seeing southern and rural "whites" do two things. Lie about who they are going to vote for..... and then not vote for Obama because of his race. Sorry, but it is true.

finn: I can certainly understand why they're breaking for Obama, and I don't think it makes the nomination any less legitimate, assuming it happens. But it still confirms that Ferraro was right, and makes me wonder why that was such a controversy.

I've never understood why any minority group gets together and votes the same way. I've voted Republican before, even though I've certainly heard many people say that if you're gay and vote Republican, you're betraying your group in some way. Those kinds of ideas must be extremely prevalent in the African-American community, and there must be people saying, at least to their friends and family, that you're betraying your group if you vote against Obama. On the other hand, if a minority group does rally together, it can be a pretty powerful way of claiming a certain amount of control, so I can see why they do it. It's a complicated issue.

I do understand minority bloc voting and have no problem with it. Lots of Greek-Americans voted Dukakis, lots of Italian-Americans voted for Cuomo in NY, and Joe Lieberman got put on the 2000 ticket explicitly to bring in Jewish votes. I don't get why it isn't just as legitimate for blacks to show ethnic pride by voting for a guy they agree with who happens to also make them feel like America has taken a measurable step toward equality. In fact, I'm sure that among those 91 percent, there are a lot of black voters who are pro-life, pro-free trade, anti-card check and/or pro-war, voted for Obama anyway, just because they want to share in the moment.

Seconding Stodder. Greek-Americans voted Dukakis. Catholics went for JFK. This is how it goes, man. I'm breedless myself but if, say, a guy from my hometown were running for office, I'd probably vote for him.

I also note that I would expect many black people to vote for Rice or Powell -- not 91 percent, but a lot.

AJ Lynch: I'm likely to support McCain over Obama, even though I'm liberal on most domestic issues, because I think it's much more important that the next President be prepared to defend the security of Israel, fight terrorism abroad, and respond appropriately in a crisis than that I agree with him in other areas. I have a slight preference for withdrawing troops from Iraq, but that doesn't mean I want someone who is running on a platform of pacifism. When he trashed Hillary for saying she would respond with military force if Iran launched a nuclear attack against Israel, I realized he was just too far to the left on foreign policy for me. And seeing Obama's supporters attack her on this issue makes me realize how different we are. How many of these people are the same ones who opposed the war in Afghanistan? I didn't take those people seriously then, so why should I vote for their candidate now?

On the other hand, if Hillary were the running mate, it would be different, because I know that if she were his Vice President and Iran attacked Israel, she would death-grip his balls until he responded to the attack in some way.

"We may not look alike, we may not be the same color, but we share the same hopes." Was Don King paraphrasing, or was that an actual quote? I wasn't paying enough attention, but it's pretty bad either way.

Basically, you only voted against me because I'm black. Great. That's gonna go over well in the general.

He said something along the lines of we've got to get off oil entirely, and we can do that by forcing carmakers to raise fuel economy standards and by forcing oil companies to invest their record profits in clean energy.

Raising CAFE standards is a cop-out. It's the Democrats' way of reducing consumption sans the price signal. It seems pain-free, but it only moves the cost burden from the gas pump to the auto lot. At that point, the policy becomes self-cancelling. If new cars are more expensive, old cars stay on the road longer, and old cars are less fuel-efficient and pollute more, regardless of how well they performed when they still had that new car smell.

Another reality is that people with more efficient cars just drive more.

But even if CAFE worked out, it would cancel the next part of his plan: Using the power of government to force oil companies to invest their profits in clean energy technology. If you're reducing demand for gasoline by, in theory, making all cars more efficient, wha' hoppened to the oil company profits? Not to mention that it's unclear how much authority the government has to force the oil companies to spend their profits in a particular way, unless you just tax them and give the money to that legion of Enrico Fermis working 9-5 for the feds.

Energy policy in this country is an incoherent mess. To say the least.

What I resisted doing tonight, apart from commenting: Phoning any of my (many) relatives in Indiana, a number of whom reside in a number of the counties (in various areas) that are preventing a formal call.

Whatever else one can say, yowza!--this ain't my mother's childhood Indiana!*** (Hometown: A teeny tiny one close enough to Lafayette that I don't remember not knowing where Lafayette is or when I first visited it.)

On balance, a good thing (given the history of Indiana, my early memories, and God knows, the memories passed on to me by my mother and generation above her).

Lots of Greek-Americans voted Dukakis, lots of Italian-Americans voted for Cuomo in NY, and Joe Lieberman got put on the 2000 ticket explicitly to bring in Jewish votes. I don't get why it isn't just as legitimate for blacks to show ethnic pride

Well sure, Democrats can get away with stuff like that; identity politics are at the core of their political strategy.

But imagine a white Republican running for President on a direct appeal to white ethnic pride, with white folks turning out to vote against the black candidate 9 to 1. The last Republican Presidential candidate to try anything *close* to that was Nixon, and people are still bitching about how horribly racist the Southern Strategy was.

I agree that voting for someone because he's black is no worse than voting for someone because he's Catholic, Jewish, or Greek -- but I differ from you in that I think ALL four reasons are equally bad.

I can't think of a single prominent elected official who makes any sense on energy nowadays.

I guess this is why the Lord gave us lobbyists. It's a pretty sick world when the only people with intellectual integrity (and please note my modifier) are oil industry lobbyists.

I'm a pro-growth, pro-market enviro. Set strict pollution limits, but don't also try to tell industry how to meet them. Let the industry figure it out for themselves. Let them build their way out of the problem -- cleaner refineries, for example. This was how we made such dramatic gains against pollution in the 70s. I trust engineers more than bureaucrats or activists to figure out how to get to a goal we all basically agree on.

I just drove a Prius for the past four days and loved it. I don't recall there being a regulation that forced the Prius into existence.

On the other hand, if Hillary were the running mate, it would be different, because I know that if she were his Vice President and Iran attacked Israel, she would death-grip his balls until he responded to the attack in some way.

I'm going to be blogging about this in a second on my own blog.

Basically, my point will be that if she does this, bites the bullet and accepts the Veep spot, she will be the Estes Kefauver riding the Adlai E. Stevenson train into oblivion.

If she loses this nomination, waits 4 years, after perhaps a middling performance from McCain she has another shot at the White House.

I'll try to expand this on my post later tonight. What do you think?

Oh and Chris, it's awkward to put it this way, but I didn't know you were gay. Since you're pro-Hillary, I'm guessing you're not a Log Cabin Republican or anything?

Victoria -- I agree wholeheartedly. The only reason Obama would take Hillary would be if he believes he cannot win without her. He must understand, though, that he cannot govern with her. This isn't George H.W. Bush we're talking about.

As for Clinton, she only takes the veep slot if she believes Obama loses with or without her. But if she believes that, she'd be silly to take it. It's a circular no-brainer.

I fully understand wanting to be part of history, and wanting to support someone of your own background.

I often wonder if I had been alive in 1960, would I have voted for Kennedy, since my religion actually means more than I like to let on.

The thing is, I didn't feel at all constrained to vote for Kerry in 2004 because he was Catholic.

But not one little iota of one little bit. Zilcho.

Even if a person with British-born parents somehow were running for President, that wouldn't even be in my top 100 reasons for voting for him or her.

I sometimes am very grateful to my own nature that I am this way, because I have no encumbrances, social or racial, to vote any way but my own world view.

I do however believe that we should be a little more forgiving of these preferences in local elections.

After all, the politicians there represent neighbourhoods which have a direct impact on our daily lives. Sometimes having a black, Cuban, Mexican, etc. politician makes them more liable to protect that demographic's interests.

But after the first "message vote" goes out to your Greek-American, or Catholic-American, black-American Presidential candidate, then continuing to vote for them based solely on those reasons is...racialist.

To use Meade's phrasing.

I guess only time will tell if black people will continue to vote 92% for a serious black candidate, on the national scale.

I hope all you Voter ID proponents are happy -- you just disenfranchised a flock of nuns. Most likely Hillary backers (old, female, Catholic) to boot. Did they represent a fraud problem? No, because their fellow nun was checking for ID.

About 12 Indiana nuns were turned away Tuesday from a polling place by a fellow sister because they didn't have state or federal identification bearing a photograph.ADVERTISEMENT

Sister Julie McGuire said she was forced to turn away her fellow members of Saint Mary's Convent in South Bend, across the street from the University of Notre Dame, because they had been told earlier that they would need such an ID to vote.

The nuns, all in their 80s or 90s, didn't get one but came to the precinct anyway.

"One came down this morning, and she was 98, and she said, 'I don't want to go do that,'" Sister McGuire said. Some showed up with outdated passports. None of them drives.

The convent will make "a very concerted effort" to get proper identification for the nuns in time for the general election. "We're going to take from now until November to get them out and get this done.

reader_iam said...Meade: Why--not generically, but specifically in terms of why you chose it--"racialism" rather than "racism"?

"Racism" is such a loaded term and, more often than not, one that is misunderstood. "Racialism" is really what we are talking about here - not racial superiority/inferiority but policy and preferences based on "race" which, in and of itself, is a questionable concept especially when those "races" are described simply as "black" or "white." Obama could have been the "post-racial" candidate but with his Pastor Wright, he blew it.

Let's look at this another way. Do you think 92 percent of all black people would vote for Condi Rice, Louis Farrakhan, Colin Powell, that guy who ran against Obama in Illinois for his current Senate seat, or Al Sharpton?

I doubt it on all of the above. It's a complex calculus and part of that calculus is demographic or "racialist," to use the term that is apparently hip these days.

yep, Hillary has had the Midwestern white racist vote sewn up since Ohio.

Had no idea that about 45% of the Democratic Party has yet to abandon its racist roots. Thanks for the update.

FLS also wrote:

I hope all you Voter ID proponents are happy -- you just disenfranchised a flock of nuns.

Yes, I'm happy about denying those without proper identification a ballot. They chose not to provide identification, which it has been well-documented is easily available in the state of Indiana. They chose to make a political statement. Their occupation does not concern me. Thanks for asking.

However, to roll history back, JFK wasn't the first beneficiary of a Catholic bloc vote. Al Smith was helped and (mostly) hurt by his Catholicism in 1928. That's why JFK had to make his famous speech.

I agree, I don't think 91 percent of all black voters would just vote for any black candidate. In fact, in the earlier primaries IIRC, Hillary did much better with blacks than she is now.

The differences are:

-- Obama has a chance to win.-- Obama is perceived to be the victim of a race-card-playing campaign, thanks to Mr. Beetface.-- Obama is a mainstream liberal Democrat, and blacks tend to turn out in big numbers for a mainstream liberal Democrat.

Add it all up and you've got an enthusiastic wave of black support that is partly racial pride, partly racial defiance, and partly ideological compatibility.

John Stodder has the right take on the question of black voters voting for a black candidate, I think. This is absolutely no surprise and no big deal. I don't remember anyone complaining when 90%+ of the Armenian-Americans in California turned out in record-breaking numbers to vote for George Deukmejian. And a very large number of them crossed parties to do it, too.

vgnavet strikes the right message on Obama's desire to run an aracial campaign. Maybe he lost those voters vgnavet talks about, maybe he didn't. His performance in North Carolina among white Democratic Party voters was one of the best he's had to date. There is just no way to look at those numbers and not see it as an impressive accomplishment given the recent controversies (largely of his own creation). If he can do that after Wright & "guns & religion," he's not in all that bad of shape. His biggest problem now is that Hillary's presence keeps him tacking left when he'd prefer to tack towards the center.

Garage, maybe you've indicated this before, and my apologies if so, but would you count yourself as one of those Clinton supporters who won't vote for Obama in the fall? Not necessarily going so far as Chris indicated, and actively voting for McCain, but saying home, even?

As much as I would like her to drop out, she really has nothing to lose at this point. She's the football coach of a team losing by 28 points in the 4th quarter who is still calling plays in an effort to win this game, but is primarily concerned about winning the next game. At this point, she is running for the dem nomination in 2012, and as upset as I have been with her during this run, in 4years I could actually see myself supporting her.

According to CNN, there's no results from Lake County - is that a glitch? That's dreadful news for Clinton if she's only leading by a few points and the county that's likely to go second most heavily for Obama hasn't even weighed in yet.

They were 80-90 years old, according to the copy-paste. The article said they couldn't drive, I think.

In 2004, in the predominantly black precinct I was given to Clerk, a little old lady arrived, aged 98 years old -- I saw her passport. A reporter was interviewing her, because she had been turned away from voting.

I could tell the reporter was all set to do the big write-up on the situation, since I had to admonish them to stay 100 yards away from the polling station, and she was licking her chops to get the story out.

When I knelt on the floor next to the old lady's wheelchair, holding her hand, I looked at her passport again. I thought, heck, she can vote "provisional" (i.e., Provisional Ballot). It's within the rules.

So we looked all over for her name in the registers, called Elections Central, the works.

Well, it turned out she hadn't registered to vote.

She thought she could come to any polling station, and because she was an US citizen, she could cast a ballot.

Do you have any idea how much it pained me to turn away this old lady? Not as much as it hurt her, I know.

But I did my job, efficiently, and I hope a certain amount of delicacy.

Regarding the nuns, here's a gut response from earlier in response to this AP story:

"I don't want to do that."

1) Then you don't want to vote that much, do you? 2) It's fair to wonder whether that response in reaction to a rule would have been acceptable to that nun in circumstances within her particular context; say, if she ever taught in a Catholic school. 3) What would Jesus do?

Seems like a relatively mild "rendering unto Caesar" moment, and far less stringent than most disciplines required by Christianity, much less Catholicism.

Victoria, you have a lot more sympathy for people who don't play by the rules than do I. I hate to sound like a hardass, but the rules are established in advance, they are for the most part simple and clear, and in truth, if a person doesn't have the ability to figure out the rules, maybe we should celebrate the rules as having protected us from that person casting a ballot.

The voter ID requirement was not sprung at the last minute. It was enacted three years ago in a blaze of publicity, has been the subject of national controversy, and was recently - like, a matter of weeks ago - ruled on by the Supreme Court of the United States in another blaze of publicity. Simply put, if you didn't know that you needed picture ID to vote in Indiana, I don't want you voting. It means you're either dumb out totally out of touch with current events, neither of which makes me think you'd be a responsible voter!

One recalls Scott Adams' argument against internet voting - at least with in propria persona voting, the real idiots get lost on the way to the polling station.

Jeff Toobin is raising the issue of vote fraud in Indiana -- Lake County's vote being held back until it's all counted smacks of the Daley type tactics of waiting to see how many extra votes are needed to achieve a result, he says.

Seven, re your 10:04 PM comment - there's a hoary old quote from Anatole France that "[t]he law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges." It's usually smugly trotted out by people who think that it's a damning indictment, but for myself, I always saw it the way implied in your comment. A law that asks the same of all people under its jurisdiction seems eminently reasonable to me.

Thanks for answering my question. I understand your hierarchy of needs now. Bit like your mother's you know and like her you tend to notice things others don't (ie.Clinton appearing to be semi-conscious).

Some have commented on black overwhelming support of Obama. In 1960, I lived in a Catholic neighborhood, JFK made a campaign stop down the main drag and I swear everyone turned out. I bet 90% of us Catholcs voted for him too. We humans are all members of one tribe or another after our immediate families. There is no shame in that- Obama may be able to take advantage of it like JFK did. We'll see huh.

Fab Five Freddie told me everybody's highDJ's spinnin' are savin' my mindFlash is fast, Flash is coolFrancois sez fas, Flashe' no doAnd you don't stop, sure shotGo out to the parking lotAnd you get in your car and you drive real farAnd you drive all night and then you see a lightAnd it comes right down and lands on the groundAnd out comes a man from MarsAnd you try to run but he's got a gunAnd he shoots you dead and he eats your headAnd then you're in the man from MarsYou go out at night, eatin' carsYou eat Cadillacs, Lincolns tooMercuries and SubarusAnd you don't stop, you keep on eatin' carsThen, when there's no more carsYou go out at night and eat up bars where the people meetFace to face, dance cheek to cheekOne to one, man to manDance toe to toeDon't move too slow, 'cause the man from MarsIs through with cars, he's eatin' barsYeah, wall to wall, door to door, hall to hallHe's gonna eat 'em allRapture, be pureTake a tour, through the sewerDon't strain your brain, paint a trainYou'll be singin' in the rainI said don't stop, do punk rock

Well now you see what you wanna beJust have your party on TV'Cause the man from Mars won't eat up bars when the TV's onAnd now he's gone back up to spaceWhere he won't have a hassle with the human raceAnd you hip-hop, and you don't stopJust blast off, sure shot'Cause the man from Mars stopped eatin' cars and eatin' barsAnd now he only eats guitars, get up!

SimonI'm going to wait to see how this all plays out before I declare anything. I have a feeling it's going to get interesting and I want to see how exactly they plan on pushing her out. She lost the spin war horribly in the press and her camp was truly pathetic. Things like when the popular vote is totaled for comparison purposes [seeing the superdelegates will have to decide this for either candidate], her popular vote in FL is never counted. With just that, they're tied. In Ohio your vote is worth 1/37 of a voter in Alaska, and yet even mentioning the pledged delegate count isn't the best way to determine the true will of the people, you would booed and hissed of the floor.

Garage - well, her popular vote in Fla. has to be counted, because regardless of whether the delegates count or not, those are still votes cast for her. Michigan is more problematic - the other fella wasn't on the ballot, which makes it hard to argue that it was a true contest wherein the votes for Hillary count, I would think.

Victoria - I used to like the idea of mandatory voting, but more and more as I've gotten older, I've come to feel that the state should be ambivalent about whether any given voter turns up. Quite the contrary: I think you ought to have some nominal hurdle to clear before voting, something that indicates you have some level of interest, and since the court's never going to overrule Harper (not that I'm arguing it was necessarily wrongly-decided), voter ID is a good start. The optimal situation is an intelligent, informed and educated electorate that participates fully. The next best option thereafter is not that everybody votes regardless of their familiarity vel non with the issues and regardless that they were coerced or bribed with the result that they voted for the top name in each race.

garage mahal: Interesting article. Someone (perhaps one of y'all) should make a map of the United States based on how much an individual's vote counts for in a given state. So, Alaska gets to be 23 times the size of Ohio, for instance. And then Florida and Michigan are represented as nothing, or maybe a small X. Could be a very striking image. And give it a headline like, "This is what the country looks like, according to the DNC pledged delegate system." And that doesn't even touch on the issue of how the delegates are calculated in the individual states.

Problem is, none of that really matters if she's also behind in the popular vote by all methods of counting it.

And if you do that map, make Texas look really weird, by having most of the state really tiny, and a piece of it bulged out. The smallish, Texas-shaped one is the primary, and the big growth is the minority of people who caucused. Find some creative way to do that.

Peter, thanks! Carlos Rosa is on at midnight here, so thanks for the timely reminder.

Simon, I don't believe in national IDs. Nor do I believe there should be any hurdle to voting, based on intelligence qualifications, or other standards of that ilk (not that you're really suggesting that! Just saying).

It's the little bit of the libertarian I have inside me. TINY tiny but there it is.

How do I reconcile this with my views on IDs above?

It's because I believe a driver's licence or State ID is no hardship to get, plus it serves an important secondary purpose (it prevents fraud and regulates driving skills).

Fraud is very important in an election, as the two dead guys who tried to vote in each of the elections in my ex-polling station, taught me.

We called them Bernie #1 and Bernie #2. I'm guessing they thought no one would notice...

This is actually very Democratic, CAC. The Party perceives a problem and gets a blue-ribbon panel to create a bunch of regulations to solve the problem. Presto! Problem solved until later when we find out that the problem isn't solved at all and, in fact, the regulations have made the problem worse and seemingly more complex.

I mean, this happens any time Democrats get in charge of something, all the time.

Kind of like how the income tax law is wholly unnecessary when applied to me. After all, the rest of the country could pick up my share of the tax burden for something like one one-hundredth of a penny per person.

So I guess I don't need to pay taxes. Heck, it is completely unreasonable to expect me to pay taxes.

Chris, it's possible - I want to hear more about the Lake County issue that John Stodder referenced. Reading other entries on the blog that garage Mahal linked to, they've noticed that something funny is going on there, too.

That is, not to put too fine a point on it, if Clinton loses Indiana by a suspiciously convenient margin supplied by Lake County, which didn't release any voting information until the rest of the state was called, I think we're justified in getting all Greg Palast about it.

Metaphorically, within the ongoing narrative, she HAS lost Indiana. That would have been true several adjustments of the spread ago (and a couple of hours ago).

But now? At this current minute? At 51-49? She has LOST Indiana, is what she did, for all intents and purposes, in that larger, ongoing narrative. The thread has been dropped, or at least lost, in some crevice or another.

So it goes.

(I think I said a while ago, after the PA pri- ... oh, never mind, never mind at all, at all.)

Just got back from working the polls in Marion County (Indianapolis) and Hillary supporter. Word DEM HQ is that Clinton will lose Indiana. Right now she is up 21,000 votes but not a single Lake County (attached to Chicago) precinct has reported in.

The primary is over tonight. Very interesting dynamics in DEM HQ. Lots of fussing and fighting. Not sure what will happen to Clinton supports in November. The higher-ups hope emotion wioll settle by then. If the general were held in next few weeks many Clinton people would stay home or vote for Mccain.

It's the little bit of the libertarian I have inside me. TINY tiny but there it is.

I don't get the libertarian objection to national ID. I get that many libertarians are afraid of the government keeping tabs on us, but, um, the government's been keeping tabs on us since the day we were born.

If the government is to provide services, and to accept control by its citizens in the form of voting, then it logically follows that the government needs to be able to tell who the heck the citizens ARE. What's the libertarian case for being able to (a) vote and (b) make use of government benefits... without the government knowing who the hell you are? I just don't get it.

Rev -- This is pretty crazy, me making this argument to you, but I think these are the issues:

1. We already have a social security card. How is a national I.D. card better? If you want, beef up the social security card.

2. I should be able to opt out of American society to the extent that I want. If I'm homeless, say, or if I want to live in a van in central Montana, that's my right.

3. Having 50 different states doing identifications can increase fraud but it also distributes the power of information, making it less likely that a central government gone awry will be able to turn against the people.

So, Obama essentially congratulated Hillary on winning Indiana before all the networks called it, and she might actually end up losing the state. I think he knew what he was doing, there. If she ended up winning, his mentioning it before it was really called would make it that much more anticlimactic. If she lost in the end, this would turn it into a shocking upset, reversed after it was "called," rather than a narrow squeaker.

There's also this ongoing question of why Lake County has been waiting to report. I think there are real questions there. They might be playing a media game there. The mayor of Hammond, which is in that county, reported their results to the county, and the county has been waiting all this time to report those results for no apparent reason.

Beefing up the social security card (with a photo, biometric data, and citizenship information) would have the same function as a national ID card, so I don't see the effect there.

I agree that you should be able to opt out of the government if you want to -- but that means no voting, no use of public facilities (e.g. public roads), etc. Otherwise you aren't "opting out", you're just leeching.

As for having 50 different states doing IDs, I don't see the advantage for my safety. The federal government has access to all of the states' driver's license records. The 50-state system ONLY benefits people who want to make fake IDs -- it doesn't provide any protection whatsoever to people who legitimately acquire a real ID.

Why? Be precise and exact. Generally those who advocate a change in the law must justify it. But I will help out my illogical and unpersuasive colleagues and postulate that requiring voter ID ensures that the voter truly is the person who's registered, and that the person is registered in only one location.

Here, the election official has ensured that the denied voter truly is the person who's registered because they live together, probably for years. They are not going to try to vote in more than one location because they are damn near immobile. They are likely not registered in more than one location because at 98 they probably have been retired to the mother house for a couple of decades -- I assume the rolls are purged at least once a decade.

In the sense that I "disenfranchise" people who forget to register to vote.

dude they registered to vote during the Great Depression. What they neglected to do was keep up their drivers licenses -- macular degeneration can make license renewal difficult.

I do have some concern with regard to some counties, within the larger context.

I also think, within the narrower narrative, that those counties should not have been the issue, or at least not in term of how the narrative was, well, narrated. It's an extension of what I saw in PA, for example.

This is not hostility, people. It's not partisanship (intra or inter). It's observation, based on, well, what I've observed over time, and a a bit of knowledge, based on some experience and, well, knowledge, of the states involved.

FWIW, as far as feelings go (not a particularly useful paradigm in this context, for me and by my lights, and so that is the regard I give them), mine are mixed.

I think you are right, Reader. You too, Victoria. (I also think the mayor of Gary is an ass, but that's to be expected in a one-party state (city), as is general incompetence of the ballot counting.)

Lamar: Published reports are saying that all Lake County absentee ballots were being counted by "little old lady" volunteers in a central locatiion, not in the precincts. The first report, 28% showing 75-25 for Obama was all from from Gary, the rest of the county is coming in now.